Pensacola Area gets 20 Million for Fish Hatchery, Improvements

Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced $20 million in state funding for the Florida Gulf Coast Marine Fisheries Hatchery in Pensacola and several other environmental projects in the Panhandle as part of the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment project.

The hatchery, to be located at Bruce Beach, could be open by the summer of 2015. I don’t see any reason we couldn’t break ground in the current calendar year and be finished in 18 months, said Gil McRae, director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission Research Institute in St. Petersburg.

McRae said the hatchery will be capable of raising up to two million fish of various species annually.

Among the other funding announced today: about $600,000 for Perdido Key Boardwalk improvements and roughly $600,000 for Perdido Key dune restoration; also, $11 million was announced for the Pensacola Living Shoreline project in Escambia County.